The boss asked for this one, and it is a story that deserves far more attention than it gets. Russia tried to join NATO. Not once, but twice. Both times, the Western alliance said no. Understanding what happened next is essential to understanding the war in Ukraine.
Russia NATO Rejection: The First Attempt, 1954
On March 31, 1954, the Soviet Union sent identical diplomatic notes to France, Britain, and the United States, proposing that the USSR be allowed to join NATO. The proposal came from Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov, who argued that if NATO was truly a defensive alliance, there should be no reason to exclude the Soviet Union.
Molotov’s reasoning was straightforward: if the USSR joined, NATO could no longer be described as an anti-Soviet bloc. The alliance would become a genuine pan-European security system rather than a military pact aimed at one country.
The Western powers rejected the proposal in May 1954, arguing that Soviet membership would be “incompatible with its democratic and defensive aims.” The practical concern was that since NATO decisions required unanimity, Moscow could veto any action, paralyzing the alliance the way the Soviet Union had paralyzed the United Nations Security Council.
Just over a year later, West Germany joined NATO. Nine days after that, the Soviet Union and its allies formed the Warsaw Pact. The Cold War‘s military architecture was locked in place.
The Second Attempt: Putin and NATO, 2000-2001
The Cold War ended. The Soviet Union dissolved. And in the year 2000, Russia’s new president, Vladimir Putin, did something that now seems almost unimaginable: he asked whether Russia could join NATO.
In a BBC interview in March 2000, interviewer David Frost asked Putin whether Russia might join the alliance. “I don’t see why not,” Putin replied.
That same year, when NATO Secretary General George Robertson traveled to Moscow for his first meeting with the new Russian leader, Putin told him directly: “I want Russia to be part of Western Europe. It’s our destiny.”
Putin went further. When Bill Clinton visited Moscow in 2000, Putin raised membership explicitly. “During the meeting I said, ‘We would consider an option that Russia might join NATO,'” Putin later recalled. “Clinton answered, ‘I have no objection.’ But the entire U.S. delegation got very nervous.”
After the September 11, 2001, attacks, Putin reached out again. In a one-on-one meeting with Robertson in Brussels, he asked bluntly: “When are you going to invite Russia to join NATO?” Robertson told him that countries apply for membership; they are not invited. Putin replied that Russia was “not going to stand in line with a lot of countries that don’t matter.”
Nothing came of it. No formal process was ever initiated. Russia was offered a consultative role through the NATO-Russia Council, created in 2002, but never membership.
What Went Wrong
Even as Putin was reaching out to the West, NATO was expanding eastward. Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic joined in 1999. In 2004, seven more countries joined, including the three Baltic states, former Soviet republics that share borders with Russia.
This happened despite assurances given to Soviet leaders during German reunification. Declassified documents published by the National Security Archive show that in February 1990, U.S. Secretary of State James Baker told Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO’s jurisdiction would move “not one inch eastward.” Similar assurances came from the leaders of Britain, France, and Germany. None of these promises were put into a binding treaty, and the West later argued they applied only to East German territory, not to other countries.
In 1997, NATO and Russia signed the Founding Act on Mutual Relations, which declared that “NATO and Russia do not consider each other as adversaries” and committed both sides to building “a stable, peaceful and undivided Europe.” The document was supposed to chart a cooperative future. Instead, NATO continued expanding.
In 1998, the American diplomat George Kennan, the architect of Cold War containmentA foreign policy strategy of limiting an adversary's territorial or ideological expansion by maintaining pressure along its borders through alliances. policy, warned in an interview with The New York Times that NATO expansion was “the beginning of a new cold war.” He called it “a tragic mistake” and said: “There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else.”
The Road to War
The breaking point came at NATO’s 2008 Bucharest summit. Despite opposition from France and Germany, the alliance declared that Ukraine and Georgia “will become members of NATO.” Russia’s then-deputy foreign minister called it “a huge strategic mistake.” a Russian newspaper reported that Putin “very transparently hinted that if Ukraine was accepted into NATO, it would cease to exist.”
Four months later, Russia invaded Georgia. In 2014, after a revolution in Ukraine ousted the pro-Russian president, Russia annexed Crimea. In 2022, it launched a full-scale invasion.
Who Is to Blame?
There is no clean answer. Russia bears direct responsibility for invading a sovereign nation. Nothing justifies bombing cities and killing civilians. But the question of how we arrived at this point demands honest accounting.
The political scientist John Mearsheimer has argued since 2014 that “the United States and its European allies share most of the responsibility for the crisis,” identifying NATO enlargement as “the taproot of the trouble.” Others, like the University of Virginia’s John Owen, counter that Putin’s authoritarianism, not Western policy, is the root cause: “Russia’s president-for-life stands condemned simply for being a tyrant.”
Robertson himself, the man who witnessed Putin’s pro-Western phase firsthand, concluded in 2022 that Putin’s “real, and well-justified, fear is of democracy,” not NATO itself. But that analysis only deepens the tragedy: a Russia that had been inside the democratic alliance would have had no reason to fear democracy on its borders.
What is clear is that the West had opportunities to build a different relationship with Russia and chose not to take them. Whether out of inertia, suspicion, or a belief that the Cold War’s winner did not need to accommodate the loser, the door was never truly opened. The consequences are measured in Ukrainian lives.
The boss flagged this one, and it cuts to the heart of a debate that has split the foreign policy establishment for three decades. Russia’s two attempts to join NATO, in 1954 and again around 2000, are not merely historical curiosities. They are structural turning points that reveal how the post-Cold War European security order was built on exclusion rather than inclusion, and how that choice created the conditions for the war in Ukraine.
Russia NATO Rejection: The 1954 Gambit and Its Strategic Logic
On March 31, 1954, Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov sent identical notes to France, Britain, and the United States proposing that the USSR join NATO. Declassified Soviet documents show that Molotov was not naive about the proposal’s chances. In his memorandum to the Presidium, he acknowledged it would “most likely” be rejected, but argued that rejection would “expose” the Western powers “as the organizers of a military bloc against other states.”
The proposal was not purely cynical, however. Molotov’s internal memo reveals a genuine strategic calculation: Soviet membership in NATO would have ended plans for the European Defense Community, prevented West German rearmament under a Western umbrella, and forced a reduction of American military bases in Europe. He wrote that if the proposal “meets with a positive attitude,” it “would signify a great success for the Soviet Union since the USSR joining the North Atlantic Pact under certain conditions would radically change the character of the pact.”
The Western powers rejected it in May 1954, citing incompatibility with NATO’s “democratic and defensive aims.” The practical concern, voiced by Italy’s delegation, was that unanimity-based decision-making would give Moscow a veto over NATO actions. West Germany joined NATO in May 1955; the Warsaw Pact was signed nine days later.
Putin’s Window: 2000-2001
The second attempt was qualitatively different. It came not from a hostile superpower probing for strategic advantage, but from a new Russian president who, by all contemporary accounts, genuinely sought integration with the West.
In February 2000, NATO Secretary General George Robertson traveled to Moscow for his first meeting with Putin. Robertson’s account, published in Foreign Policy in 2022, is striking: “He told me, ‘I want to resume relations with NATO. Step by step, but I want to do it.’ He added that ‘some people don’t agree with me, but that’s what I want.’ And he said, ‘I want Russia to be part of Western Europe. It’s our destiny.'”
In a March 2000 BBC interview, Putin was asked whether Russia might join NATO. “I don’t see why not,” he replied.
Putin raised the issue directly with Bill Clinton during Clinton’s visit to Moscow later that year. “During the meeting I said, ‘We would consider an option that Russia might join NATO,'” Putin later recounted in interviews with Oliver Stone. “Clinton answered, ‘I have no objection.’ But the entire U.S. delegation got very nervous.”
After 9/11, Putin was the first world leader to call George W. Bush. He offered overflight rights, intelligence sharing, and logistical support for the Afghan campaign. In a one-on-one meeting with Robertson in Brussels shortly after, he asked point-blank: “When are you going to invite Russia to join NATO?” Robertson replied that countries apply, not wait for invitations. Putin’s response: “We’re not going to stand in line with a lot of countries that don’t matter.”
The NATO-Russia Council, established in 2002, gave Russia a seat at the table but no path to membership. It was consultation without integration.
The Broken Architecture: Expansion, Assurances, and Structural Exclusion
The decision to expand NATO eastward rather than integrate Russia into a broader European security framework was not inevitable. It was a policy choice, and a contested one.
Declassified documents published by the National Security Archive at George Washington University reveal that Baker’s “not one inch eastward” assurance to Gorbachev on February 9, 1990, was part of what the Archive calls “a cascade of assurances” from Western leaders, including Bush, KohlA dark eye cosmetic made by grinding minerals such as galena or malachite into powder mixed with oil. Used for thousands of years across ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and beyond., Mitterrand, Thatcher, Major, and NATO Secretary General Manfred Woerner. Baker told Gorbachev three times in one meeting that “not an inch of NATO’s present military jurisdiction will spread in an eastern direction.” West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl assured Gorbachev the following day: “We believe that NATO should not expand the sphere of its activity.” As late as March 1991, British Prime Minister John Major personally told Gorbachev: “We are not talking about the strengthening of NATO.”
None of these assurances were codified in treaty. The 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act declared that “NATO and Russia do not consider each other as adversaries” and committed to building “a stable, peaceful and undivided Europe, whole and free.” But the document was politically binding, not legally binding, and NATO proceeded to admit three new members in 1999 and seven more in 2004, including three former Soviet republics.
George Kennan, the architect of containmentA foreign policy strategy of limiting an adversary's territorial or ideological expansion by maintaining pressure along its borders through alliances., saw what was coming. In a May 1998 interview with Thomas Friedman, the 94-year-old diplomat said: “I think it is the beginning of a new cold war. I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else.” He added: “We are turning our backs on the very people who mounted the greatest bloodless revolution in history to remove that Soviet regime.”
Bucharest 2008: The Point of No Return
The structural exclusion reached its critical massThe minimum amount of fissile material needed for a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction. Depends on geometry, purity, and whether a neutron reflector is present. at NATO’s April 2008 Bucharest summit. The Bush administration pushed for Membership Action PlansA NATO program of practical assistance for aspiring member countries, designed to help them meet alliance standards and prepare for accession. for Ukraine and Georgia. France and Germany opposed. The compromise was worse than either option: no formal accession process, but a declaration that “these countries will become members of NATO.” It was a commitment without a timeline, a provocation without a plan.
Russia’s response was immediate. Its then-deputy foreign minister called it “a huge strategic mistake which would have most serious consequences for pan-European security.” As Mearsheimer documented, Putin warned that Ukraine’s NATO membership would represent “a direct threat” to Russia, and one Russian newspaper reported that Putin “very transparently hinted that if Ukraine was accepted into NATO, it would cease to exist.” Four months later, Russia invaded Georgia.
The Analytical Divide
The question of culpability splits the foreign policy establishment along theoretical lines.
The realist school, led by John Mearsheimer at the University of Chicago, argues that “the United States and its European allies share most of the responsibility for the crisis,” identifying NATO enlargement as “the taproot of the trouble.” In this analysis, great powers invariably resist military alliances advancing toward their borders. The United States would react no differently if China tried to bring Canada or Mexico into a military pact. The Clinton and Bush administrations, captive to what Mearsheimer calls “liberal hegemonyA foreign policy doctrine in which a dominant power uses its influence to spread liberal democracy, free markets, and international institutions globally.,” expanded NATO because they could, not because they should have.
The liberal-institutionalist counter, articulated by scholars like the University of Virginia’s John Owen, holds that Putin’s authoritarianism is the root cause. Owen argues that “Russia’s president-for-life stands condemned simply for being a tyrant” and that it is democracy itself, not NATO, that threatens Putin’s grip on power. In this view, the Eastern European states that joined NATO did so because they chose to, and their sovereign choices should not be held hostage to Russian veto.
Robertson himself, arguably the Western leader who best knew Putin’s early thinking, offered a hybrid view in 2022: “His real, and well-justified, fear is of democracy. He has seen the aspiration of former communist countries to join the European Union change these countries permanently and fundamentally. The EU is the bogey.” Robertson recalled that during his years of engagement, Putin “never complained about NATO enlargement, not once.” But Robertson also acknowledged the radical transformation: “What irrational thought process has changed that man into a monster?”
The Structural Failure
The strongest version of the argument is not that Russia was blameless or that Putin was destined to be a democrat. It is that the post-Cold War order was built without a place for Russia, and that this was a choice, not a necessity.
A Russia inside NATO, or inside a reformed European security structure that gave it genuine stake in the system, would have faced entirely different incentive structures. The Eastern European nations’ legitimate security concerns could have been addressed through a framework that included, rather than encircled, Russia. The 1997 Founding Act gestured toward this vision but never delivered on it.
Instead, the West built an order that required Russia to accept its own permanent exclusion from Europe’s primary security architecture while that architecture steadily advanced toward its borders. Kennan predicted the result. The Burns cable of 2008 described it in real time. And Ukraine is paying the price.
None of this absolves Russia of the moral and legal responsibility for invasion. Sovereign nations have the right to choose their alliances, and no grievance justifies the bombardment of civilian infrastructure. But the analytical question, how did we get here, requires confronting the possibility that the West’s greatest strategic failure was not a lack of deterrence but a lack of imagination.
